The slayings of shoppers and schoolchildren just 10 days apart — innocents engaged in everyday activities — helped fuel a visceral public demand for Congress to do something, lawmakers from both parties say. The negotiators produced a bipartisan bill on gun violence that the Senate is moving toward approval later this week, with the House expected to act sometime afterward.
Here’s a look at the confluence of factors that helped produce a compromise.
This is an election year. Republicans are favorites to take over the House, now closely controlled by Democrats, and have a solid chance of capturing the Senate 50-50.
To enhance your chances, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.he knows he needs to attract moderate voters like the suburban women who will decide competitive races in states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
Taking steps aimed at reducing mass shootings helps the GOP show that it is responsive and reasonable, an image tarnished by former President Donald Trump and far-right deniers of his 2020 election loss.
Underscoring his preferred approach, McConnell praised the gun deal, pointedly telling reporters Wednesday that it takes significant steps to address “the two issues that I think it focuses on, school safety and mental health.”
The bill would spend $8.6 billion on mental health programs and more than $2 billion on safety and other improvements to schools, according to a cost estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Analysts estimated its total cost at around $13 billion, more than is paid for by the budget savings it also claims.
But it also makes juvenile records for 18- to 20-year-old gun buyers part of required background checks to purchase firearms, bans guns for convicted domestic abusers who aren’t married or living with its victims and strengthens the penalties for arms trafficking. It funds violence prevention programs and helps states implement laws that help authorities temporarily take away guns from people deemed dangerous.
DEMOCRATS ALSO WANT A MIDDLE TERM
The measure lacks stronger restrictions backed by Democrats, such as banning assault rifles used in Buffalo, Uvalde and other massacres and the high-capacity ammunition magazines those shooters used.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said Wednesday that this time around, Democrats decided they would not “vote on a bill with a lot of things we wanted but had no hope of passing.” . That has been the pattern for years.
Democratic Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, led negotiations in talks that lasted four weeks. His agreement is the most significant gun violence measure by Congress since the now-expired assault weapons ban enacted in 1993.
For nearly 30 years, “both parties sat in their respective corners, decided it was politically safer to do nothing than to take chances,” Murphy told reporters. He said Democrats needed to show that “we were willing to put some things on the table that took us out of our comfort zone.”
Gun rights advocates are disproportionately Republican, and the party contradicts them at its peril. Trump, possibly gearing up for a 2024 presidential bid, issued a statement calling the compromise “the first step in the movement to TAKE AWAY THEIR GUNS.”
McConnell was at pains to say the move “doesn’t even touch the rights of the overwhelming majority of American gun owners who are law-abiding citizens of their right mind.”
Still, the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups oppose the compromise in what will be a test of their influence.
Supporting this legislation may not doom Republicans with pro-gun voters.
McConnell and Cornyn have spoken about GOP polling showing gun owners overwhelmingly support many of the bill’s provisions. And those voters are likely angry about skyrocketing gas prices and inflation and might vote Republican anyway.
About two-thirds of the 50 Republicans in the Senate are expected to oppose the gun measure. But congressional approval would be a victory for the GOP in preventing Democrats from using gun violence in their campaigns, said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “Taking this off the table as a potential issue for Democrats puts the spotlight squarely back on inflation and the economy,” Newhouse said.
Not so, says Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin. He said the passage will allow Democrats to promote an achievement in running Congress and show they can work across party lines. Democrats can still campaign against Republicans for opposing tougher measures like restrictions on assault weapons, issues on which “Democrats clearly have a high political ground,” Garin said.
Fourteen Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted Tuesday to move the legislation one step closer to passage. It’s probably telling that she and Indiana Sen. Todd Young were the only two facing re-election this fall. Three are retiring and eight, including McConnell, Cornyn and Tillis, won’t run again until 2026.
Senators say they have been struck by a different mood at home.
The No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate, Richard Durbin of Illinois, said some people he has known for a long time told him “maybe it’s time to get my kids out of this country,” which he called unbelievable. . “That they even considered that possibility tells you how desperate the families are” after the recent shootings.
“The first thing I heard was, ‘Do something,’” Murkowski said. “And it wasn’t, ‘Ban this, do that,’ it was, ‘Do something.'”
That was not true for everyone. Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana, where guns are very popular, said of his constituents: “They want to make sure their Second Amendment rights,” the constitutional provision that allows people to own firearms, are upheld.
Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
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